Page 8 - Chase Case Study Final

Sales were initially split evenly between the on and off trades, with the
company’s produce stocked in Waitrose and Harrods as well as

numerous London bars, restaurants and hotels, including The Ivy and
The Ritz.

However, in 2010 half of Chase’s turnover came from outside the UK
with the expectation that this would steadily increase as US distribution

through a deal with Pelican Brands gave the company access to a
market that accounted for around 60pc of all premium vodka sales.

Chase capitalised on the fact that the potatoes are all grown in the
farm's own fields. They are harvested and then sent to the potato

grading shed, a giant structure, where rotating teams of manual workers
labour from 6am to 8pm, seven days a week, where they sort through
lorry-loads of potatoes to remove the soil and stones and visually inspect

about 200 tonnes each day. In the beginning the largest potatoes were
used for crisps and were sent on to Tyrrells while the smallest were used
for seed potatoes. In the past, the middle-sized potatoes were sold as

animal feed but they are now used for vodka. They are added to water,
fermented, and then distilled and bottled. It all takes place on site.

The method is indicative of the distillery’s vodka-making process, which

is very much hands on.

The potatoes are harvested, peeled and chopped, added enzymes then

break them down into greyish mash. They are then left in a fermentation
vessel for about a week where the glucose converts to alcohol. The
mash is then pumped into the top of a stripping column; as it falls down

the column steam is introduced which strips out the alcohol. Twelve tons
of mash produces about 1,800 litres of base alcohol.

The base alcohol is then mixed with water in a large copper tank. It is
heated with a steam jacket round the outside, till alcohol rises as a

vapour through Chase's 70ft tall copper rectification column. By
travelling up this column – twice – the alcohol is distilled more than 100
times. Spaced up the rectification tower are 42 bell shaped copper

distillation plates. When the vapour rises up and hits the underside of the
plate it condenses and drips off the edge. But vapours are also passing
up through the sides, and it re-evaporates off those as well. Each time